Monthly Archives: January 2005

Taste of Russian Fantastica

I’m instituting a new feature here at Aliens in This World.
Every week or so, I’d like to explore a noted work of Russian Fantastica
(SF/F) by translating the first paragraph or so.

(I’m only able to do this because Russian fans and writers have cooperated
in putting a large number of books online. With a huge number of books and
stories available but few in print at any one time, a fandom that lives not
only all over the former Soviet Union but all over the world, libraries and
bookstores never able to keep up, publishers keeping prices down but also
printing on thin acidic paper, and the erratic delivery of Russian mail,
this is a very practical solution. However, I do also mean to continue to
buy actual Russian books through kniga.com
and the like, as well as physical Russian bookstores in the US.)

My intention is that Anglosphere publishers and fans should become interested
in, or at least aware of, the rich flowering of Russian science fiction and
fantasy. Also, I mean to educate myself about Russian SF/F, if only by a
quick glance at what Russian fans are reading.

I should warn people, however, that first paragraphs may be especially misleading in Russian books. Russian writers and readers seem to like a nice leisurely start, often including the season and current state of the weather in that world!

Andrei Lazarchuk has won many Russian awards for both his science fiction and fantasy. In 1994, he won the Long Form Strannik for The Other Sky (Inoe Nebo, an alternate history novel; as well as the Moon Sword for horror for his novel Mummy; the Sword of Rumata for heroic SF, for his novel Sturmvogel; and the Mirror Sword for alternate history, for his collaboration with Mikhail Uspensky, Look in the Monsters’ Eyes.

His other novels include Too Late by Summer, The Holy Month of Rin’, Soldiers of Babylon, Tin Pinewood, Tranquilium, Everyone Able to Hold a Weapon, and another collaboration with Mikhail Uspensky, The
Hyperborean Plague. He’s also translated works by Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, and Lucius Shepard.

Lazarchuk was born in Krasnoyarsk in 1958 and got his degree from the Krasnoyarsk Medical Institute in 1981. First he worked as a doctor, but he’s been a professional writer since 1989 and lived in St. Petersburg since 1999.

Here’s the first paragraph of The Other Sky. It’s very long!

6/6/1991
About 1400 hours.
Vargash Station, on the nation’s border.

Everyone, I’ve had enough of Japanese technology: I bought a watch a week ago, and the minute hand has already come loose and shows not the time, but the direction of the center of the Earth — that which interests me least of all today. In the end, why can’t an engineer, even given that it’s government work, not be able to get himself a decent watch? Maybe not Swiss. That’s butter. Maybe an Adler… Beyond the railcar window rolling from right to left, came the clanking of bumpers: probably they’d hitched an engine to the Imperium. Of course, the Imperium can’t diverge from the timetable. But we, of course, can… The quite identical Japanese men standing under the railcar sheds hurried to their places. The black and white Japanese — black coats, white trousers — sat themselves down in the black and white cars of the Imperium, the Pyongyang-Tomsk-Berlin-London express, the only train which passes through the lands of all four Great Powers…something about this seemed to me neither amusing nor symbolic — more likely, it seemed, done from boredom — but I didn’t have time to hit upon it, because the quiet musician from the speakers was interrupted by a sweet voice — I also saw it as belonging to this blonde, blue-eyed girl with a little doll’s mouth and a magnificent bow on her head — first in German, and then in Russian, pronouncing: “At the border guards’ insistence, the search of the railcars has been lengthened. The company extends its apologies to the gentleman passengers traveling to Kurgan, Kamenetsk-Ural and Yekaterinburg Stations; they may obtain compensation from the station cashier whenever convenient for them. We will return to the timetable after reaching Yekaterinburg.” So…it’s a lengthy search… I automatically looked at the watch, and then I slammed it against the table. When we get to Kurgan — I’ll buy a new one. I’ll buy an Adler — in spite of the Commander. It’s decided. I’ll do it that way.

Russian Military SF

(Yes, I like Baen, but their cover design are el-stinko. Anyway…it’s a funny place to find Honor Harrington!)

Roman Zlotnikov seems to write a tad bit of military sf/f, and he’s won some awards so he must be decent to read. Here’s some of what he’s written:

Assembly (Sobor): In the primeval forest live ancient mages. They’ve kept Perun’s magic up to today. Now soldier and mage go into a deadly fight with evil.

The Eternal: Swords Over Stars (Vechniy: Shlagi nad Zvezdami): Humanity is losing planet after planet to the forces of the Dark. Only the Eternal, who unite all humanity, can give humans a hope of victory. Other books in the series: Risen from the Ashes, …And Manyfaced He Came aka Trap for the Ruby Prince, Last Raid.

Soldier: Doomed to Fight (Voin: Obrecheniy na boy): KGB agent Kasimir Puskevich dies and finds himself in a parallel world. Now he fights for good, and they call him Gron. Other novels are: Deadly Blow and Last Battle.

Imperiya: Vivat Imperator!: There are immortals among us; they blend in and often help. When the aliens show up and we have to look unified to impress them, the immortals decide Russia must become a “monarchy” again — and then a global empire. Other books in the series: Imperiya: Armageddon.

Mutiny on the Edge of the Galaxy: Humanity is attacked and the Earth conquered by aliens. Some keep some technology. Others, scrabbling for life deep beneath the surface, become the tribes called berserkers. Others in the series: Soldiers on the Edge of the Galaxy.

As non-Russian fans of science fiction may or may not know, there are a good number of awards being given in Russian sf fandom. The Strannik Awards are one of the more prestigious ones, and are given at each Russian Congress of the Fantastic for specific achievement in the previous year. (Well, except for the lifetime achievement type awards like “Master from Afar”.)

Anyway, I recently found the website for the Stranniks and its complete list of awards and winners. (And nominees, but I’m not that insane.) Since someday it may happen that a winner must be found, I’ve got a little list that I’ve transliterated and translated. Please feel free to copy it elsewhere.

Little Stranniks to the founding fathers of the awards:Arkady Strugatsky and Vladimir Mikhailov, for founding modern Russian SF;
Yevgeny Lukin, for the hit of the season, the song “The Horse System Ran”
Boris Zavgorodniy, as “the legendary man of Russian fandom”

My New Digital Camera

I got myself a digital camera for Christmas. (Kodak. $99.00. Thanks for the tip, Instapundit.) I am having a good amount of fun with it. I’m afraid I’ll never be a journalist, though; I keep missing all my opportunities to take pictures of massive drifts and raging floodwaters. I do, however, mean to work on my incredibly picturesque sunsets. :)

I also want to put up pictures of the beautiful churches in Dayton’s diocese (and whereever else I happen to wander). I mean, I’m going to church anyway, so why not?

On Saturday, I ended up traipsing around downtown Dayton in the unseasonable winter sunshine. Here are a few pictures.

Lorenz Publishing, a very good church music publisher. I don’t remember the name of the Protestant church next door. St. Joseph’s is a block behind Lorenz.

St. Joseph’s was an immigrant neighborhood church (mostly German and Irish). They had an old and small church on the present spot, which they’d outgrown. So they got the money together just after the turn of the century to build this showplace. Note St. Patrick and the Infant of Prague. (The baptismal font and other stuff were moved over to this side area during Christmas.)

Today St. Joseph’s is run by the Precious Blood Fathers, since the neighborhood really can’t support a parish. (Nobody lives downtown anymore.) But lots of people do go there. For one thing, there’s been a 6 PM Sunday Mass at St. Joe’s for as long as anyone can remember, and that’s a real lifesaver.

Also, a good deal of pro-life and traditional-but-not-rebellious activity is centered here, due to the PODness of the good fathers. This picture is hung out in the vestibule over the pro-life bulletin board.

On one side of the vestibule, St. Therese and her roses preside over the bulletin boards and radiators. (The other end has the bathrooms and water fountain, with a plaster bas relief of the Last Judgement. The old baptistery has also been turned into bathrooms, an act of charity toward the elderly church attendees.) You will notice that St. Therese’s toes get a lot of wear! This statue was put up shortly after she got canonized.

Here’s one of the beautiful sets of vestibule doors. Note the stained glass over it — the lily for chastity is an attribute of St. Joseph.

As you can see, the Nativity scene and Christmas decorations were still up (probably because of all the weird weather). So I took some pictures of them. The top picture is how a lot of these pictures looked without “enhancement” by my software. The camera doesn’t see things as brightly as the human eye and brain can with its proprietary self-adjusting hardware and software. Even though your digital camera has a flash. :)

There’s always been a St. Anthony statue in the back of the church. He’s (among other things) the patron of finding lost objects (because a thief once stole his psalter and then returned it). So it’s appropriate and charming that the shelf underneath his statue has become the designated lost and found area. You can’t really make it out, but there are gloves and scarves down there. (As well as Elmo.)

I apologize for not having any good pictures of the beautiful altar and tabernacle. St. Joe’s always has a lot of people praying and doing devotions both before and after Mass, even on weekdays. I didn’t want to disturb them with my flash. Then the lights got turned down after Mass, and there were still tons of people there, so I held off some more, and…well, finally I did take pictures, but there were still enough people praying that I felt the need to slink around the outer bits, and not snap any good pictures of the altar. So that’s why there’s no pictures yet of the most important parts of this church, not because I lack understanding of the relationship between the architecture and the Mass. ;)

The terrible tsunami and all the snowmelt flooding in the Miami Valley have inevitably reminded people around here of the terrible 1913 Flood. Obviously, the scope was not at all the same (although both Dayton and Cincinnati suffered terribly, and most of the Midwest was hit hard). OTOH, the tsunami survivors didn’t have to face cold rain, gas explosions, or raging infernos doing their best to destroy all that was left.

But Dayton does have a powerful lesson for everyone about what to do after a disaster: “Remember the Promises Made in the Attic”. It is vitally important that people affected by the tsunami should band together and insist that something be done. I know these people are very poor in many cases, but there ought to be some sort of simple precautions and preparedness that can help against storm damage and even the odd tsunami. Naturally there will be lots of political infighting and outright corruption; but something must be done. In Dayton, it was the donations of local people and local corporations that did the job. There was no sense waiting on the state or the federal government to keep Dayton safe. So they raised the money themselves, even before everything was rebuilt. Here are some old political cartoons documenting what happened.

Finally, I am very pleased to note that my disreputable relative the madam made an appearance in Noah Adams’ Wright Brothers book, The Flyers. Scroll down to “Lib Hedges”. I didn’t know she was buried in Woodlawn, so I called my mom, only to be informed that she’d already known that. Apparently my grandfather may have occasionally visited her grave on the sly, just as he’d visited her office without previously informing his parents of his intention when he was a kid.

(I’ve probably told this story before, but…my grandfather was a great exploiter of the various family feuds among the elder generation of Hales and Heyers. He visited everybody who wasn’t talking to each other, and generally collected goodies. So naturally, when he found out he had a relative who was a rich madam, he made it his business to find out where her real estate/legitimate business office was. From then on, he and his cousin, or another little friend, would drop by every so often and chat with his seriously disowned great-aunt. She would give them money to go to the movie house, which was just down the street…and which belonged to her. If this whole story doesn’t give you a deep understanding of my mother’s side of the family, I don’t know what will.)

So I fully intend to visit my great-aunt’s grave when the weather’s good. She didn’t live the easiest life, and she apparently got all reclusive after losing most of her money in the stock market crash and Depression. (Though not all of it, apparently. Most of that half million was probably not liquid assets, though; it was her real estate holdings.) There’s no denying that she got her money by exploiting other people, though. Though she supposedly treated her girls well, she was still selling their bodies. Though prostitution was legal in Ohio back then, it was still wrong.

All the same, she did give a lot to charity. Famous Daytonians talks about her notable contributions to the YMCA and YWCA. And the most famous (and Hale-like) story about her tells how she not only donated a thousand dollars to flood relief, but told the collectors to tell every businessman how much she’d given. A very nice bit of psychology, that — both shame and genteel blackmail in one. The woman deserves at least a few flowers.

(BTW, the Look Homeward, Angel story is a bunch of bushwah. Wolfe’s dad carved an angel in their hometown which is a much more likely candidate.)

Christians Cause Natural Disasters

More than 1500 years after this idea was polished off by The City of God, certain theologically ungifted Muslims flirt with the idea that Christian holidays cause natural disasters. Just ’cause we’ve got a lot of holidays in spring and December, apparently.

Feb. 29, 1960
Leap year hits and so does a massive earth tremblor in Agadir, Morocco. What lives the quake doesn’t claim, the resulting damage does. A tidal wave and fires combine to take 12,000 victims.

Note: Ramadan began on Feb 28 in 1960.

May 31, 1970 (sic)
Far away from China, another tremblor leaves 50,000 dead, after the earth moves in Peru.

Note: The Prophet’s birthday was celebrated May 18. And the temblor was May 21, actually.

November 1970
It’s considered by many to be the greatest natural disaster in modern history. A cyclone that roared through Bangladesh and coastal India caused a storm surge, and is believed to have taken an unimaginable 300,000-500,000 people, the greatest single toll from one storm in the 20th Century.

Note: Nov. 12, 1970. Lailat ul Qadr was celebrated on Nov. 25.

September-December 1983
The tsunami tragedy must have left many in Thailand feeling a tragic sense of deja vu. More than 10,000 people were killed in a series of monsoons that struck the nation in just four months.

Note: Eid al Adha was celebrated Sep 18, and Muharram on Oct 8.

June 21, 1990
An earthquake hits northwest Iran, and rumbles the Richter scale at 7.7 By the time it’s over, 50,000 lie dead and 60,000 more are injured. At least 400,000 are homeless.

Note: Eid al Adha was celebrated on July 4.

April 1991
At least 138,000 succumbed when a cyclone smashed ashore in the Chittagong region of Bangladesh. A country already suffering from such terrible poverty could hardly afford the cost of this disaster. It’s estimated the damage was around $1.5 billion.

December 1999
Venezuela, warmed by the phenomenon of La Nina, experienced ten days of non-stop rains and deadly flash floods, leading to mudslides, drownings, and severe sickness, as more than 10,000 die. Almost 150,000 are homeless.

Note: Ramadan began Dec. 9.

Some disasters not mentioned on the forum:

November 13, 1985:
A small eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia on November 13, 1985 leads to a massive mudflow that covers the city of Armero and kills more than 23,000 people.
Note: Prophet’s Birthday celebrated Nov. 25.

June 15, 1896:
About 27,000 people drown following an earthquake-induced tsunami off the coast of Japan.
Note: Muharram celebrated June 12.

August 26, 1883:
Krakatoa, a small volcano on an uninhabited island between Sumatra and Java, explodes. The eruption and a tsunami kill 36,000 people in this Indonesian region.
Note: Eid al Fitr celebrated August 5.

Now, did all that prove anything beyond “there’s bad weather in the spring, fall and winter” and “this chick has a lot of time on her hands”? Of course not. It’s a silly discussion altogether.